Monday, December 21, 2015

This year we celebrate the travels that were, and reminisce
about the travels that weren’t. The highlight was our voyage into the Arctic
Circle in June and July. After Antarctica in 2014, the Arctic wouldn’t wait. We
began with a week in an Oslo apartment on the bay, then flew to Longyearbyen on
Svalbard in the Arctic Circle to board the National
Geographic Explorer. Our ship was the same as our Antarctic trip, but we
were in cabin 202 instead of 204. Many of the staff and crew were also on the
Antarctic trip, and they were a pleasure to journey with again.

As on the Antarctic trip, we were inundated by human-caused
climate change propaganda, and I pushed back hard with facts about millions of
years of natural climate change, of much greater warming and higher sea levels.
I put together a Power Point presentation and got scheduled with the staff to
present it, but then I was cancelled and rescheduled to a time in competition
with other activities.

We only saw a couple of polar bears. We expected to see
more, but the East Greenland sea ice was much thicker than Lindblad/National
Geographic anticipated (global warming was on holiday), so we eventually were
refunded $4,000 for the disappointment. I had studied polar bear survival and
found that it was lowest when there was thick spring sea ice, and not when
spring sea ice was thin, because polar bears need to gorge on young seals
during the spring and thick sea ice is bad for seal survival. Polar bears get
over 2/3 of their annual nutrition in 1/3 of the year, and the rest of the time
get by on scavenging, goose eggs, small animals, and whatever else they find.

Attracted to the ship by our breakfast bacon odor

They seemed to like our company

Reindeer on Svalbard

Colorful Puffin on Iceland

Hiking on Iceland

Alice is making very good progress on her memoir, The Lady with Balls, and has finished
200 of a planned 320 pages. She works on her writing tirelessly, and never hits
a “writer’s block.” She decided when she began writing her memoir that it was
her job, and she does not allow herself much time off. I enjoy getting the
first pass at editing it, and her story is so interesting that I get too
involved and need to make a second reading to catch what I missed the first
time through. After I take my turn, Alice works with other editors to ensure
that clarity and good pacing.

Just over a year ago we (90% Alice) bought a nearby house
for rental income. Our first tenants were a young couple with a child; within
three months they informed us that their bank account was frozen by the
government and that they could not pay the rent and were moving out. We did a
home inspection while they were moving out when they weren’t home and found an
extensive system for growing pot in the downstairs workroom and garage which
had not been set up yet. The young man was abandoned by his wife, and became
very lethargic about completing moving out. We already had found a very good
tenant ready to move in, and we despaired of getting the old tenant out, so we
hired some local handymen to remove all his things and put them in our big
metal barn, including the pot growing devices. We gave the young man a night in
a Gualala motel, and when he told me that he had no money and would sell all
his stuff to me for $300 cash, I paid him on the spot.

Is anyone in the market for pot growing paraphernalia?

I organized a Point Arena High reunion in August covering my
class of 1960 and classes from the beginning of time (1950) to 1970, which was
a lot of fun. My regret was that many of my closest friends from our school
days had other commitments and couldn’t attend. I’m begging Alice to let me do
another in two years instead of five so that I can concentrate on getting all
of my close friends there. She thinks I’m crazy, but I really enjoy the
planning and organizing, and then seeing everyone.

Just over two months ago we went to Van Nuys in southern
California for Alice’s 55th Reseda (Tarzana) high school reunion,
the first stop in a month-long trip/cruise that was to begin in Turkey, visit
Israel, Malta, Sicily, and end with nine nights in Rome. As Alice and I were
dancing very energetically at her reunion, I felt and heard a “pop” that I soon
found was from my totally ruptured right Achilles tendon. We had to cancel the
entire trip and I needed an operation to reattach my tendon. I hobbled around
with a cast and crutches for six weeks, and now have an enormous walking boot.
It isn’t bad, though. I can play ball with Radar every day at the beach now,
and drive again.

Next year Cuba? Alice gets to choose. Then I’ll probably
choose a whale-watching cruise to Baja for 2017.

Weather report: it’s a rainy day on the coast, with over
four inches of rain since yesterday morning, and we haven’t even reached the
expected El Nino storms due in January and February. Soon all the drought gloom
and doom will be replaced by flood and mudslide gripes.

Everything old is new again, and at age 73 Alice and I have
seen and heard a lot. And we just told you a lot of what we saw and heard this year.